Facebook has gotten stricter with their advertising policies, so make sure you review what is and isn’t acceptable for your ads before putting too much brain power into creating them. Then, create your Facebook business fan page. This is of the utmost importance to have a presence. It’s free and a good place to share links to your website. Just like with the ads, choose your cover image and construct each section with your business goals in mind.

Now, let’s move on to the particulars of a Facebook ad. These ads are designed to reach your target market in as near a natural fashion as possible. You can reach people based on a number of demographics like: age, gender, location, likes, and interests. It’s all based on your advertising goals. Are you looking to get people to:​

Visit your website for sales?

Talk about your page?

Install or use an app?

Shop in your physical store?

Invite others to events you host?

Redeem great offers?

Connect with your business?

There are a variety of ad options depending on the objective of the advertising campaign. You can embed videos; use a carousel photo approach with separate links for each image or other options using the Facebook editor. But, no matter what the approach all great Facebook ads have a few basic “good practices” in common.

Use short, catchy phrases or sentences – tell as much as you can in as few words as you can. Offer an enticing value proposition (why should they read and follow your CTA [call to action]). You’ll begin to lose people in about 15 seconds, so catch their eye from the beginning.

Add colorful images – images evoke feelings, display products or services and create a statement without saying a word. Stay relevant, however. A photo of a dog does not exactly tie in with a food delivery service (even if he is cute).

Include a call-to-action in text and also a button – there should be no mistaking what you want your viewers to do next

20% text rule – any image you use cannot contain more than 20% of the space devoted to text

Include business name prominently within the ad

Social stats – where applicable, show number of likes and other information by others

Ad placement – right column, desktop newsfeed or mobile newsfeed

Set your budget – stay in control of how much you pay for each ad or ad set. Use optimized bidding (oCPM) to stay within a bidding range.

By the same token, the landing pages need to be kept strictly geared towards the advertising objective. For example, if the objective is to sign up for a service, then this page should be set up with the options available with all information and clear buttons to complete the transactions. Never send a viewer to a page that requires them to go somewhere else to complete your call-to-action.Depending on the advertising objective or your ads, they will appear to viewers who meet your specific parameters. Many people log in multiple times per day. Your ads need to be ready for their viewing and found on pages that they frequent most. Optimize for mobile pages so images are clear and readable and videos load immediately.